The legendary American folk singer Phil Ochs is widely regarded as one of the world’s most influential political musicians. Rising to fame in the 1960s, Ochs used his music to both chronicle and help mobilize the labor rights, civil rights and antiwar movements. A new documentary, Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune, has just been released chronicling Ochs’ life. We speak with Phil Ochs’ brother Michael and Kenneth Bowser, the...

As part of our ongoing series on music and resistance, we speak to Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and Boots Riley of The Coup. Their band Street Sweeper Social Club has just released a new record, The Ghetto Blaster EP. [includes rush transcript]

Guitarist Tom Morello, whose great uncle was Kenya’s first prime minister, Jomo Kenyatta, talks about the similarities between his background and President Obama’s. "Other than the fact that we’re devastatingly handsome, half-black dudes with Kenyan fathers, white American mothers, from Illinois, who both went to Harvard, there’s very little in common between us." [includes rush transcript]

Today, a Democracy Now! global broadcast exclusive interview with Emily Henochowicz. She’s the twenty-one-year-old American art student who lost her eye in May after being shot in the face by an Israeli tear gas canister at a protest against Israel’s attack on the Gaza flotilla that left nine people dead. "I’m not ashamed of the fact that I lost my eye. I’m proud of who I am. I believed in the cause, and...

The pioneering African-American actress, singer, and civil rights activist has died at the age of 91. We speak with James Gavin, author of, Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne. Part I of this conversation can be viewed here

Lena Horne enjoyed a six-decade singing career on stage, television and in film. She was the first black woman to be signed to a long-term contract by a major Hollywood studio. She helped break racial boundaries by acting alongside white entertainers, but she was segregated on screen so producers could clip out her singing when the movies ran in the South. In the 1950s, she was blacklisted in part because of her friendship with Paul Robeson...

We bring you a Democracy Now! special with the singer-songwriter, poet, artist and punk rock legend, Patti Smith, on her life, her art and her singing and speaking out. "I do things that make people upset. My political views or my humanist views have caused me a lot of censorship, but I don’t have a problem with that," Smith says. "What I would have more of a problem is if I had to look back on my life and say, 'Yeah,...

The official death toll from the war is 100,000, but it is widely estimated to be much higher, perhaps even as high as one million. In his latest piece of artwork, Iraqi American artist Wafaa Bilal tries to grapple with the enormity of these numbers. It’s a twenty-four-hour live tattooing performance called "...and Counting" that began at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts gallery in New York Monday night. By tonight...